


In My Memory, like Daggers in My Mind

by Bara_no_Uta



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Acute stress disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Myriad Program (Supergirl), Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 17:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8454832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bara_no_Uta/pseuds/Bara_no_Uta
Summary: She can't get it out of her head: Kara on the ground, pleading with her to regain control of herself, and yet being helpless to stop her body from inflicting the thing she feared above all else. Her own life being threatened, she could deal with. The knowledge that, had her mother not been there, she could have -- WOULD have -- murdered the sister she dedicated her life to protecting, however... Alex is haunted by it. She tells herself that it's over now; there's no reason that everything shouldn't be completely okay, at least regarding Myriad things. But even though it's over, it isn't okay. Not to her. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like it is over...





	

**Author's Note:**

> When I watched 1x20 – after binge-watching Supergirl for the better part of four days – I couldn’t shake the thought of how traumatic being under mind-control would be. I won’t bore you with a mini-essay on trauma, but what I will say is that when a person is robbed of their autonomy, when something happens that they have no control over, the likelihood of traumatic symptoms is at its highest. And Alex has been through a lot – like, a LOT – but I think having her autonomy ripped from her and being forced to attempt to kill her sister, who she’s pretty much dedicated her entire life to protecting, has got to take the cake. Plus, a big risk factor for experiencing acute stress disorder is when someone has already experienced a lot of previous trauma.  
> By the way, acute stress disorder is symptomatically very similar to PTSD. One of the main differences is that it occurs within a month of the traumatic event whereas PTSD is when it’s occurring anytime after a month. People don’t always develop acute stress disorder before PTSD, and conversely, there are people with it who don’t go on to develop PTSD… but many do (about 80%). But in Alex’s case I think she was able to resolve it via help before that happened, since we don’t see her struggle with it in the next fight we see.  
> Anyway, so this is just a oneshot on my headcanon, I guess.

            Alex thought she was fine. Or maybe she had just convinced herself of it. After all, there was no reason for her not to be fine, was there? (So she insisted to herself, at least.) Supergirl saved them all, and then she saved Supergirl. Not a single person died. Minutes away from it, yes… but she was sort of used to near-death experiences by now. Accepted them as simply an occupational hazard. At least, when it was her own life at risk.

            She had been having a lot of nightmares lately, but those were just dreams. She told herself that they would pass and tried to pretend they didn’t keep her up the rest of the night when she finally woke. Not to mention doing her utmost to keep it from affecting her at work. She hadn’t yet been back on the field, but if something came up and she was distracted, it could mean loss of life, and that was never something she wanted to allow if it could be prevented. If someone was hurt because of her distraction – especially Kara – she would never be able to forgive herself.

            And that was wherein the problem really lay. She refused to let herself think about what had happened on That Day. It was over now. It was in the past, and she insisted to herself that there was no reason to so much as let it cross her mind.

            Today was her first sparring match with Kara since that happened. Her first sparring match with anyone since it happened, actually. Honestly, she wasn’t nervous at all. As far as she was concerned, it was the exact same as any sparring match.

            Alex closed the door, then readied her fighting stance. “Ready?”

            “Ready.” She moved forward, readying a punch.

            Alex easily dodged it, preparing one in retaliation when something she couldn’t identify hit her like a ton of bricks. It was like she lost time, lost space… She wasn’t even aware of whether her punch hit, whether Kara retaliated herself.

            As it happened, it didn’t and she did. The punch lost its force suddenly, but Kara hadn’t had time to notice that. She let a punch of her own fly – stopping the force right before it hit, as she tended to do.

            But Alex didn’t react at all. Fight immediately dropping, she looked to her sister’s eyes and saw her wide-eyed and disoriented. “Alex? Can you hear me?”

            That only seemed to make it worse. “No—No!” She reached out, not even aware of her actions yet, and shoved Kara away with all her strength before stumbling backwards herself. So much that she fell to the ground, so unlike herself.

            Luckily, the impact seemed to bring her back, while Kara was still trying to regain her balance. “Oh, god, what did I do?” she asked, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that was far too strong a reaction for a sparring match where it was probably nothing outside of the ordinary, but that knowledge did nothing to assuage the dread in her heart.

            And the horror in her voice, too… It felt more connected to whatever had just happened in Alex’s mind than the actual sparring match, and she wondered whether she should even answer. But knowing Alex, it seemed better to tell her the truth. “Just a push. Didn’t even hurt. I’m much more concerned about you.”

            Alex had already forced herself to her feet, trying to look as normal as possible, although her legs felt unsteady. Her arms were crossed, but in that way that looked like she really needed a hug, although it was generally a part of her classic attempts at looking fine when she wasn’t at all. “I’m fine.” The words were automatic, but when she looked for something to come next, she drew a blank. If she were fine, she would say she was ready to continue the sparring match, but she knew she couldn’t.

            “You’re not fine.” She reached out, hesitating just long enough to let Alex pull away if she wanted to before putting a hand on Alex's arm, as her sister allowed it. “Alex, talk to me.”

            But she really, _really_ didn’t want to talk about it. “I just haven’t been sleeping well, that’s all.”

            “Why not?”

            Kara was looking at her with all the concern in the world. She looked away, not feeling she deserved it right now. But there was no way to avoid the conversation forever. She pulled away to go sit down, back against the wall. Her tongue briefly wet her lips as she tried to figure out where to start.

            Of course, Kara was sitting by her side. When something was bothering Alex, that was usually all she could do – support her. Alex was always the problem-solver, after all. Luckily, oftentimes that was all a person needed.

            “I’ve been having a lot of nightmares,” she began. “Really… horrible nightmares.” She put her head in her hands, soon feeling an arm around her. Alex let herself lean into her sister. “I don’t really want to talk about them. I try not to think about them.”

            “Okay. Then… talk to me about what just happened.”

            “And I _really_ don’t want to talk about that.”

            “I know. But you need to.”

            She let out a slow breath, knowing Kara was probably right. Never once had she had a problem disappear due to her efforts at avoiding it, no matter how valiant they may be at times. “I don’t know. It’s never happened to me before. I just can’t shake the feeling that they’ve gotta be connected.” She forced her head up, though leaned it into Kara. The security of her presence was comforting, especially with what she was forced to think about. “They’re about… That Day.” That’s the way she had been thinking about it, not wanting to remember anymore than was strictly necessary. But how was Kara going to know which day she was referring to? She took a deep breath. “The… day of Myriad.”

            “Oh.” So much had happened that she couldn’t even begin to guess which part of it, but as she rewinded it in her head, she thought of how difficult it had to have been for her. Kara didn’t even know all that had happened, either. Just that Alex had thought she would lose her twice, been under the influence of mind control (making her body _responsible_ for one of those times), and been minutes away from death – which everybody talked about as being the worst pain they had ever felt. “What part?”

            She turned her head so that her face was pressed into Kara’s shoulder. At least with Kara’s hearing there was no need to worry about her voice being muffled. When she spoke again, her voice shook. “The part where I nearly killed you, and I—” She started to cry, and Kara shifted so that she was hugging her close. “Why wasn’t I strong enough to stop it? Why didn’t your voice reach me, when I’ve never wanted anything but to protect you? What if Mom hadn’t been there; I would’ve—” For the first time, she let herself break down about it, sobbing quietly into Kara’s shoulder. “I would’ve killed you, and I… I…”

            “Shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay.” Mindful not to use too much force and hurt her, she hugged her just a little tighter. “What matters is that I’m alive, and Fort Rozz is gone.”

            “But it’s not okay! I know that – the things you’re telling me – so I don’t know why, but it’s not… it’s not okay.”

            “It’s not your fault. Remember that time with the Red Kryptonite? Even though I said such… _terrible_ things, you forgave me. Because it wasn’t me. And that day, it wasn’t you. It was Non. And you couldn’t have fought that anymore than I could have fought the Red Kryptonite. And… even though I told you not to come back, if you hadn’t, I would be dead. You saved my life… again.”

            “No matter how many times I saved your life, it wouldn’t matter anymore if _I killed you_.” The words were gut-wrenching to say, but it’s the way a lot of her nightmares were.

            “But you didn’t. And that Myriad thing, it’s never gonna happen again.”

            She took a deep breath. She felt no less miserable, but her tears had calmed, so she was thankful for that at least. Kara’s reassurances felt nice and meaningless at the same time. “I just can’t stop thinking about it,” she confessed. “Even though I try so hard not to… When we were sparring… I have no idea what came over me, why it made me push you, anything, but… Kara, it’s like it was happening all over again. Like I was powerless and going to hurt you and couldn’t do anything to stop it.” She wished she could forget the images burned into her memory – mostly of Kara pleading for her to snap out of it – but it seemed impossible. She didn’t want to admit it, but she felt helpless against the memories, especially if she couldn’t count on them being limited to her sleep anymore.

            She wondered what she could say. Was there anything at all she could do to help her? She couldn’t say that it was okay, or she could make whatever it was go away. The concept sounded vaguely familiar – maybe like a piece Cat wrote a long time ago – but she couldn’t quite place it. She didn’t even know how to help Alex forgive herself for what she had been forced to do. All she could say for sure was, “Well, whatever’s going on, you don’t have to go through it alone.”

            “Yeah. I’m sorry for not saying anything; I just…” She trailed off.

            “Don’t like to ask for help?” Kara completed, though her voice was gentle.

            She shook her head. “Well… that, too, I guess. But mostly, I just didn’t want to talk about it, you know?”

            “Yeah. I understand.” She hesitated for a moment before admitting, “We’ve all been worried about you. I guess it’s because of the nightmares? You’ve seemed so tired lately, and sort of… out of it sometimes, maybe.” Which was why she hadn’t really even wanted to spar with her, but she knew Alex was so stubborn that someone would have to show her that it would affect her performance – at least, Kara assumed it would – before she would listen. And even then, there was still no guarantee she wouldn’t jump into the fray, especially if Kara was involved... It was really worrisome, to say the least.

            “Was it that obvious?” she asked, internally cringing.

            She pulled away to look at her. “We know you, Alex. And we care about you. I’d like to think we can tell when something is wrong.”

            Not always, but Kara was right that that often did seem to be the case. It was both unsettling and comforting at the same time, knowing that they cared so much but also that there was no guarantee she could hide things if she wanted to. Maybe that wasn’t so bad, though. Ultimately, that much might really actually be a good thing.

            “Hey, how about you stay over tonight? We can fall asleep watching movies like when we were young.” Kara offered a smile. Never mind that they were still sharing a bedroom at that point in the first place.

            Alex hesitated. She knew that if she did, and she woke up from a nightmare – which was pretty likely given her track record as of late – Kara would only worry about her more. On the other hand, Kara was already going to be worrying about her anyway. “Sure.”

            “In the meantime… let’s end the sparring match and work on other stuff for a while, okay?”

            She hated it, but she had no choice but to agree. She just couldn’t do this right now. “Yeah.” What was she going to do when she had to go back into the field? Maybe it would be different if she was fighting against somebody who wasn’t Kara, but she didn’t know, and she didn’t want anybody else to see her like this, so both fieldwork and sparring would become problematic.

            “Hey, Alex? Will you promise me something?”

            “What is it?” Kara was somebody who might have immediately said yes, but Alex’s responses were always more guarded and cautious than hers, no matter how much she trusted her.

            She knew Alex probably wasn’t going to be the biggest fan of this suggestion, but it felt important, so she made it anyway. “If that kind of stuff keeps happening – even just the nightmares – promise me you’ll talk to someone? I mean… someone who might know what’s going on and be able to figure out how to help you, better than I can. The DEO has someone like that, don’t they?” The military did, after all.

            “You mean like a therapist?” She shook her head. “And risk someone from the DEO _seeing me there_?”

            “Look, we all went through something awful. You… probably more than any of us, between nearly getting taken to Cadmus and… that day.”

            “I don’t want people to think I’m too weak to handle things on my own.”

            “Hey.” She put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Even _Supergirl_ can’t handle everything on her own.” She thought, but didn’t say, about the fact that Cat, certainly someone who ranked in her ‘Top Five Most Amazing People’ or something like that, had a therapist. She recognized, however, that that wasn’t the sort of thing a person was supposed to share about someone else.

            She sighed as she reminded herself that if she didn’t get it dealt with, people were bound to continue noticing, and then what? And what if it didn’t go away? “Fine. _If_ it’s still a problem by next week, I’ll go.”

            “Okay.” She very lightly squeezed Alex’s shoulder, then stood.

            Alex followed suit. “In the meantime, I’m sure there’s some research I could be doing.”

            “And I… should probably get back to the office.” Kara Danvers’ lunch break was probably over by now. “Take care of yourself, alright? And stop by sometime after work. I can order us pizza.”

            Finally, she smiled. “Alright. You take care of yourself, too.”

            “I will. See you later—” And her phone was going off. She checked. “Ms. Grant. Guess that’s my cue.” She laughed, then quickly went to change back into her civilian clothes, all the while talking to Ms. Grant and telling her that, yep, she was definitely out getting her lunch and the line was ridiculous but she would definitely be back soon!

            Alex took a moment longer to collect herself, reflecting. “Stronger together,” she murmured.


End file.
